Sat, May 28

Awesome Legislation Dept.—1:34 PM

Restraining Orders for the Moderately Hot: The way this would work is, girls who look cute in bikinis from 100 paces (but not so much up close) would be forced to remain at a distance of 100 paces at all times. This way, they don't shatter the pretty fantasies that you've already got in your head when they start walking toward you on the beach and they don't live up to the hype.

This would be reduced to 50 paces if I don't have my glasses on.

We would also have a corollary for young ladies smoking cigarettes in public but coyly holding them out of view until after I've fallen in love with them, and then taking a long drag. Girls who smoke would be required to wear a T-shirt reading "I'm Smokin' (and not in the good way)" at all times. Or perhaps just print that on a burlap sack.

1 comment

Wed, May 25

The Black Rock is neither black nor a rock... Discuss.—10:24 PM

So, I watched the end of the first season of Lost and I remain pretty underwhelmed, especially based on its strong start. (Not Desperate Housewives underwhelmed – but that's a long way to go.) Anyhoo, nice job tying a few things up, but definitely way more unanswered/new questions than I was hoping for.

I'll say this: (and, in the spirit of remaining spoiler-free for the time being, only this) the out-of-nowhere Daniel Roebuck character ended up being an excellent venue for expressing some common complaints about the show.

20 comments with related links

Mon, May 23

Jacksonville Film Festival

Mom's been bugging me to attend the Jacksonville Film Festival in my hometown since its official inception three years ago. My summer trip home finally coincided with the festival this weekend, so I can report on its offerings. (Read more.)

1 comment with related links and photos

Thu, May 19

The Angry Family

With the conclusion of Everybody Loves Raymond there are precious few shows remaining that set a good example for how a sitcom should be. (Read more.)

1 comment with related links

Tue, May 17

Secret Wall Tattoos—11:51 AM

This is a cute little art project, where people are taking down art from hotel room walls, fashioning their own designs on the wall behind it, then replacing the original art to allow future guests to discover the secret.

There's a whole gallery on the Secret Wall Tattoo website – I think my favorite is this one because it's self-reflexive.

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Mon, May 16

Veronica Mars

The first season of Veronica Mars may well be the best first season of a TV drama so far this decade. Before it's too late, I implore (nay, order) you to try this show – you won't regret it. (Read more.)

10 comments with related links

Thu, May 12

Linkification

The redesign continues – an update on how the additions and revisions to the administrative pages are going to make things a lot better for me personally, and the site in general. (Read more.)

0 comments with related links and photos

Science, Gender, and Gender Science—1:46 PM

I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but I wanted to get it to Arksie as quickly as possible:

The Science of Gender and Science

In the new onebee, it will be possible to comment on links. Since this is not yet the new onebee, I'm generating a quickie entry so that if there should be a rousing discussion on this topic, it will have a place to live.

2 comments with related links

Awesome Invention Dept.—1:17 PM

Yet another of my brilliant ideas for improving all our lives: microwaves should come with a little TV screen (three or four inches would be enough) so you can watch a cartoon or a few minutes of SNL while you're waiting for your lunch to heat up.

This is particularly necessary in the office environment, where you can't really do anything while waiting – you have to stand sentry so you can take your food and free up the microwave for the next guy as soon as possible. It might be an excellent service for TiVo to provide, since everyone is (once again) predicting their demise. A hard drive as small as 10 or 20 gigs could easily store plenty of clips – and download new ones overnight. It could call up customized programming based on the length of your cooking, or it could allow you to select from a menu of your favorites.

You're just standing there, watching 3:30 tick down to zero – wouldn't it be more fun to watch last night's Top Ten list?

2 comments with related links

Tue, May 10

Disney, the company—2:16 PM

Thanks to alert reader AC (whose initials may be the same as those Anonymous Cowards you keep hearing from, but I promise he isn't them!) passed along this link to a write-up in Britain's "Times" about the chances for Jim Henson's Muppet Show to retain its anarchic flair under the watchful eye of its new corporate parent, Disney. It includes an excellent analysis of the character-weakening effect of wisecracks, which is reminiscent of my take on The Simpsons from a few days back. It also includes references to Pixar, in the context of the only good movies Disney has been associated with in years – so you can see why it's linked from this page.

The Disney Muppets: why that just isn't funny

(In fairness, even without the Pixar, I couldn't resist linking to an article that employs the phrase, "Gonzo and his battalion of chicken-wives.")

Granted, it's all speculation as to what the Muppets will turn into under Disney and how Disney's corporate stuffiness may or may not snuff their anti-establishment wit. But it's certainly in keeping with Disney's recent history to assume that there's rough road ahead. Roy Disney and his allies are entirely right that the corporation has lost the focus that began with Walt. There's less whimsy and more focus groups – a focus on the bottom line rather than the wide-eyed kid in the front row. Plus, they tried to kill Kelsey Grammer, for crying out loud!

3 comments with related links

Mon, May 9

The Dumbest Guy in the Room

Sometimes what seems like simply hanging out before a wedding turns out to be something more. I was so distracted, I forgot to be psychotically obsessed with the fact that the bride was just two stories up and she's actually met the Olsen twins! (Read more.)

3 comments

Search!—9:54 AM

Last week, the focus of my redesign shifted from the editing tools to the search feature. It looks like it will still be a while before these functionalities are finalized and made public, but when they are, searching this site will be a lot faster and more powerful.

For one thing, I've increased support for Google-style queries, specifically exclusion and exact-phrase matching. Now you can run searches like survivor -hatch to find Survivor columns and eliminate those which mention Richard Hatch. Or, "olsen twins" -erection

This, of course, led to a reevaluation of the way listings are coded. Code sensei Rushbo pointed out that it's grossly inefficient to do hit the database 21 times to display a list of search results (once for the query, 20 times to fill in the details for the first 20 hits) as I was doing with my new object-oriented approach. Silly me, I forget that just because something is stored in an object doesn't mean every attribute of that object has to be filled in. If you're just displaying title, date, and ID, you can grab that from the database as part of that first query and then you don't have to return 20 more times.

So, now I'm going back and upgrading other listings to follow the same, more efficient model. I really should've known better in the first place, but the pages were loading so fast! It's just more of the cycle already well established in this redesign: brilliant insight!, drudgery, drudgery, drudgery, brilliant insight!, ...

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Fri, May 6

Stage Diving—11:13 AM

Kelsey Grammer took a pretty big fall during a speech at the Disneyland 50th Anniversary this week and, needless to say, the blogs have video for you. It's extremely difficult not to laugh, even though I feel really bad about it.

The Grammer Falls [Defamer]
Update: Defamer's video link is dead: here's the clip

Of course, the first impulse is Schadenfreude: Grammer has a bit of a "stuffed shirt" persona because of his Frasier character, and we're all aware of his past substance abuse problems, so it's easy to blame him. But it's clear that the Disneyland people – in their obsession with whimsy – have created a jagged edge across the front of the stage. With the lights in his eyes, it's easy to understand how Grammer would have failed to notice the gaping crevices that are built into the stage. To add insult to injury, the points are nice and sharp so when he falls into one of these crevasses, he gets a bop on the face and a fairly hard jab in the hip.

It's hard not to laugh at the fall, and the immediate awkward silence that follows as venue officials rush to the celebrity's aid. I think it makes sense for him to be a bit disoriented, though. And the clip ends with, "I'm so sorry for my language." He's a class act, all the way.

4 comments with related links

Wed, May 4

"Us" & "Them"—4:20 PM

Kung Fu Monkey's John Rogers is on a roll again regarding politics and winning. He draws a very clever and unique analogy to stand-up comedy on the road – and, more importantly, adopts my ingenious suggestion that our president isn't a bad public speaker, he's a bad liar. (Of course, Rogers states it more clearly and eloquently and adds that Bush believes his own bullshit image, which I knew but never expressed because I don't proofread, I just spew it onto the keyboard and then hit 'publish' before I realize how many holes I've left in it. Oh well.)

Anyway, read Learn to say "ain't" and then read Feedback & Criticism. It's really impressive and I like stuff that's about starting the conversation no matter what side of the fence you're on. I tried it myself with a recent poll and it didn't go that well, so why not appreciate a savvier writer's more successful approach?

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Losing our Daily dose of Colbert—12:09 AM

"The New York Times" has a new article announcing that Stephen Colbert will be spinning his "Colbert Report" mock-promos off into an actual half-hour show of the same name, to follow The Daily Show on Comedy Central. (Don't forget to pronounce that "Col-BEAR Re-PORE" ... "It's French, bitch!")

This is the terrible occurrence of what we knew to be an inevitable eventuality – over the last year or so, Colbert has emerged as the principal correspondent in The Daily Show brood, always guaranteeing a laugh with his fake stand-up reports and his golden-tongued analysis segments at the desk with Jon. I'm thrilled for him that his excellence is being recognized – I guess I'd always hoped that instead of his own show, they'd just start paying him an insane amount for his work on The Daily Show.

The silver lining, of course, is that he won't have gone far. This is better than leaving the show completely for a movie career. But the article notes that Colbert's appearances on The Daily Show will become "intermittent," which is vague but hopefully means more often than Steve Carell whom I still miss dearly. Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, and Samantha Bee do fine work, and often generate laughs, but none can match the stone-faced gravitas of Colbert. When he reports "live from the scene," he and Jon Stewart both play the straight man, and the results are doubly hilarious.

At the very least, we have to hope his "This Week In God" segment will carry over to The Colbert Report. I don't know how I'd live without the God Machine.

2 comments with related links

Tue, May 3

Animation Domination

Fox pulled the plug on Arrested Development four episodes early so it could round out May with its new block of animated shows, which began on Sunday. Initial responses within. (Read more.)

19 comments with related links